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Saudi Arabia has introduced a series of new laws which define atheists as terrorists, according to a report from Human Rights Watch.

In a string of royal decrees and an overarching new piece of legislation to deal with terrorism generally, the Saudi King Abdullah has clamped down on all forms of political dissent and protests that could “harm public order”.

Another ex-Muslim atheist is under threat in another majority-Muslim country. This time the country is Morocco, which has Islam as the state religion, and the ex-Muslim atheist is Imad Iddine Habib, age 22.

Sevan Nisanyan is a Turkish citizen of Armenian origin, living in Turkey, who is openly Atheist. He is also a public figure, an activist, an historian, a conservationist, an etymologist and more.
He spares no words when it comes to Islam and religion in general. He has many published books, is active on Facebook, twitter, and has a blog.
Of course he gets a lot of death threats.
But this video against him is especially interesting:

There is a serious threat to freedom of thought, expression and political opinion in Bangladesh. Atheist and freethinking voices are the target (including the three bloggers paraded by the authorities in the image above).

Islamist political parties have provided government with a list of 84 “atheist bloggers” and are demanding the death penalty for “insulting religion”. Several bloggers have already been arrested and a government official promised to pursue all those listed.

Last week, we said the government would be “walking into a trap set by fundamentalists” if they gave any succour to these demands. But they did. And on Friday a rally on the order of 100,000 Islamists marched in Dhaka (video) calling for a new blasphemy law and for the execution of the atheist bloggers. Earlier this year a prominent atheist blogger was murdered in a machete attack at his home, so we are also concerned about the safety in public of those accused of “blasphemy”.

We are urging IHEU Member Organisations and humanists everywhere to act now in solidarity with the bloggers and to put an end to the threats and intimidation.

DHAKA, Bangladesh – Police in Bangladesh arrested a self-styled “militant atheist” on Wednesday for anti-religious writings as part of a crackdown on bloggers in the face of pressure from radical Islamist groups.

The arrest of Asif Mohiuddin, 29, comes a day after the detention of three other bloggers and ahead of an Islamist march this weekend towards the capital Dhaka to demand the death penalty for online atheist writers.

Around 2:00am this morning, I was woken up by a WhatsApp message from an ex. What did he want in the middle of the night? Well, it turned out he has just seen a homeless white couple and he wanted me to know racism is a figment of my imagination. Just saw this drug couple […]

Time to launch the Patreon. I tested it on Facebook the other day to see if I’d done it right and people started pledging right then but this is the actual launch. I’m going back to the original B&W, with NO ADS and no fatuous people announcing that I’m a transphobe because I have my […]

In less than a month the International Humanist and Ethical Union (IHEU) organised three further Café Humaniste events in collaboration with its Member Organizations in Peru, Guatemala, and Colombia. The events represent astonishing new public participation and outreach for humanist groups in countries that were not previously holding public events, and othe […]

Yesterday voters in Alabama did something many thought impossible. They rejected Republican Roy Moore, left, a Christian fundamentalist, in favour of a pro-gay, abortion supporting Democrat, Doug Jones, right, for the US Senate. The stunning result was nothing short of an embarrassment for President Donald Trump and a disaster for Republicans in Washington a […]